This is your copilot speaking

While I loved driving with my dad in his Chrysler Newport, he never took me digging for clams in it.One cold night when my oldest daughter was an infant my wife and I stayed too late at a friend’s house and had to race home with an inconsolable baby strapped into the car. We sang about Little Bunny Foo Foo hopping through the forest and came up with some crazy things to get bopped on the head. No matter what we tried my daughter shrieked.

I turned onto the half-mile driveway that led to our old rented farmhouse and floored it. Halfway up the hill a deer sailed over the hood. For a split second Bambi filled the entire windshield. My wife and I screamed. The deer never touched the car. My daughter quieted down.

When my wife took what amounted to a second-shift job I started picking up my daughter from daycare and driving her home alone. Even as a one-year-old she found a way to tell me she didn’t like how I drove. Within ten minutes she’d start wailing in the backseat. It didn’t matter what song I played on the radio or what I pointed to out the window or how many pacifiers she had or how fast I drove, she maintained a constant wail that would leave me no option but to pull the car onto the shoulder of the road and get out.

Motorists often passed me as I leaned against the back of my car, hazard lights flashing. On different occasions two people stopped to help. Both drivers rolled their windows down, heard the screaming coming from my back seat, and nodded before driving away.

I can change a flat tire in less than ten minutes. An unhappy child strapped into a car seat? That’s an impossible fix for anyone.

When I was a child I spent my weekday afternoons riding my bike from the neighbor’s to the playground and back. Car trips were reserved for doctors appointments and clothes shopping. On the weekends if my dad looked like he was going to drive somewhere in our Chrysler Newport I jumped into the passenger seat. I drove anywhere with him in the “Blue Bomber,” my arm out the window, the wind in my face, quietly listening to whatever he said.

My daughter’s generation has been driven to school, piano, dance, play dates, swimming, camp, art class, and back for their entire lives. My oldest wouldn’t hop in the car and go to the hardware store with me unless I promised to buy her gum.

Two years ago that changed. Two years ago I pulled into my driveway with a different automobile. I pulled in behind the wheel of a shiny green convertible.

I’m not talking about a new convertible by any means. This car ran through its warranty before my oldest was born. It didn’t have a single cup holder. After a trip on the highway it smelled like burned oil. My daughter looked past all of that. She quickly turned into my favorite copilot.

The first Friday night I owned the car I drove my daughter to a friend’s house. Instead of dropping her off her friend hopped in. Both girls settled into the backseat for a cruise to nowhere. After a while I stopped listening to their pre-adolescent chatter and settled into the curves and dips in the road and the wind in my hair.

An hour into the trip my daughter shouted, “That is so cool!” I turned. Both girls leaned across the back of the seat as a Cinemascope sunset unfolded in the valley behind us.

My wife couldn’t stand the color or the shape or anything much about the car. She said it was perfect if you wanted to impress twelve-year-olds. She was right. My daughter proudly called it “Daddy’s Midlife Chrysler.”

My daughter wanted the roof down whenever possible, not that I needed much encouragement. One winter night we raced a snowstorm to the dry safety of the garage, singing Jingle Bells as the snow flew into our two-hundred-horsepower sleigh. On clear, cold winter mornings I delivered all my children to school in a roofless car. The principal said he wanted to thaw them out with hot chocolate every morning. I reminded him they were dressed for morning recess in the snow.

One cold night my oldest and I drove the two hours back from a visit to the grandparents. My daughter sat next to me, huddled under a blanket, watching the night sky. I felt her shiver and directed all the heat from the vents at her. As we headed down a hill at highway speed she turned from the stars and said, “Dad, maybe you should put the roof up tonight.”

I pulled onto the shoulder. My hazard lights flashed across the dark road. I looked up at the stars in the sudden silence. My daughter poked me and asked, “What are you waiting for?”

I raised the roof and floored it. She might be my favorite copilot, but I knew when I needed to take her home.